A denial-of-service attack uses iMessage as the tool

Denial of Service attacks have started to become very common these days. We are seeing such attacks on popular software companies, military computers, government offices, banks, university computers, and more. And it has reached a level that denial of service attacks are now being targeted to certain people. And the attacker has a used a very old trick from the text book and used a very simply software code to do that. The attack was done using the iMessage messaging service provided by Apple on all Apple computers for all Apple customers. The iMessage messaging service can be tied to a phone number if you have an iPhone, or if you have an Apple computer, you can use the iMessage software with your Apple email address.

Anyway, the attacker has written a very simple Applescript code to send large strings to certain people over the iMessage service. And these large strings of sometimes complex characters are sent at such high speeds that even the service is not able to handle the stream of data being sent to it. And as you can see from the image above, the stream of these complex characters is just a pain. Before you can figure out what to do or how to stop this, the iMessage software would have fought hard enough to understand the string and render it on the screen. This will not be possible and would just die, crashing the service, which you will no longer be able to use. This is just what denial of service means.

So even though the attacker is not harming anyone’s property, or stealing any data, he is for sure giving a bad headache to some people. At present, there is no option to block a user on the iMessage service or change the intervals at which the software receives data. So the only solution to stop this is to disable the service for some time.

The attacker has targeted only a handful of iOS developers, and the reason for the attack is not yet known.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: we are not affiliated with the device manufacturers or phone carriers we mention in any way, all suggestions are based on our own experience and research, you may use our advice at your own discretion.